Blizzard committed to keeping a sense of community
by Mathew McCurley 
Mar 13th 2012 at 4:00PM
Nethaera echoes a very important point, one that just doesn't get enough play in the MMO genre and its contenders -- people play whatever MMO their friends are playing. People go where the people are. The ingenious part is that while players are deriding the Dungeon and Raid Finder tools for destroying community and tearing people apart, the new Real ID instancing is making grouping and playing with new people I had never imagined I would play with a possibility. New communities are being formed. Just because the community doesn't look or feel like it did seven years ago does not mean that a sense of community is gone. It's just in different places.
Hit the jump for Nethaera's full post. Sound off in the comments about how you think Blizzard should go about fostering its community.
Nethaera discusses the "sense of community."
This isn't the first nor the last time we will see a discussion about community and the sense of community, I'm sure, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's important though that we keep these discussions constructive however.I'm going to channel some Ghostcrawler for you this morning and see if we can open up the discussion a bit.
/puts on her hat and robe
Keeping a sense of community while still meeting the needs of the community as a whole is a huge challenge for us. We fundamentally believe that having a sense of community is an important thing for the long-term health of the game. However, we don't think the way to foster that community is to force players to spam global channels trying to find groups. Dungeon Finder and Raid Finder have enabled a lot more players to run dungeons and raids regularly and we'd be very reluctant to ever go back to a world without them.
The trick for us is trying to grow a stronger sense of community despite having global queuing features that will likely pair you with strangers you may never play with again. We believe players generally have more fun and stick with the game longer when they play with friends. The queue systems are a substitute for when you don't have enough friends (or even enough friends online at the moment) to participate in that content. We aren't trying to, and wouldn't want to, turn WoW into a solo game. These systems are merely to facilitate a need to connect more easily with players interested in tackling this content.
/puts on her hat and robe
Keeping a sense of community while still meeting the needs of the community as a whole is a huge challenge for us. We fundamentally believe that having a sense of community is an important thing for the long-term health of the game. However, we don't think the way to foster that community is to force players to spam global channels trying to find groups. Dungeon Finder and Raid Finder have enabled a lot more players to run dungeons and raids regularly and we'd be very reluctant to ever go back to a world without them.
The trick for us is trying to grow a stronger sense of community despite having global queuing features that will likely pair you with strangers you may never play with again. We believe players generally have more fun and stick with the game longer when they play with friends. The queue systems are a substitute for when you don't have enough friends (or even enough friends online at the moment) to participate in that content. We aren't trying to, and wouldn't want to, turn WoW into a solo game. These systems are merely to facilitate a need to connect more easily with players interested in tackling this content.
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Filed under: Blizzard, News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Jamie Mar 13th 2012 4:04PM
Sense of community, eh? I can't make a joke about that! Lets says looking at some of the stuff posted on the forums, this community can make no sense!
Okay, I give up. I've had one too many squares of chocolate.
akbrim Mar 13th 2012 4:25PM
Yeah, funny thing about it, the people who are yelling about community are also the ones complaining about everything that Blizz does.
Don't know about you, but I don't like rude and whiny people in my community ;)
ziggler Mar 13th 2012 4:25PM
A little story about forums:
I started playing around the beginning/mid BC, as I endured the install I decided to check the official forums and iirc the MMO champion forums.
There were so many "this game is dying" and "theres no sense of community in this game anymore" threads that the two friends that advised me to try Wow had to spend at least an hour reassuring me that I hand't wasted money buying this game.
Revynn Mar 13th 2012 5:03PM
- "I started playing around the beginning/mid BC, as I endured the install I decided to check the official forums and iirc the MMO champion forums.
There were so many "this game is dying" and "theres no sense of community in this game anymore" threads that the two friends that advised me to try Wow had to spend at least an hour reassuring me that I hand't wasted money buying this game."
Haven't you heard? The game WAS dying back at the start of BC! It's been long dead for 6 years now! The last two expansions were all a giant conspiracy by the evil mega-corporations to bleed us dry! MoP? It's just another elaborate ploy!
Funny how little things change. I read an old thread linked off of a WoW Archivist article that dated back to pre-BWL and all of it was just a bunch of whining about welfare epics, how the game is dying, Blizz is jumping the shark, B-team development phoning it in, blah blah blah. The same crap everyone was whining about when MoP was announced.
Kunikenwad! Mar 13th 2012 4:19PM
I applaud Neth for her effort ...
... but srsly? I think Blizz dun trolled us.
razion Mar 13th 2012 4:29PM
I find your lack of faith... disturbing.
Kunikenwad! Mar 13th 2012 4:37PM
@ razion
Oh, I dunno. Maybe I'm overreacting to it, but I can't honestly take that post seriously ... not when the game they're talking about has essentially turned the capital cities into lobbies for LFG, LFR, and PVP content. I know my opinion is in the minority and that's ok, but I find the talk of 'community building' alongside the defense of the LFR tool to be a tad disingenuous. And no, I don't have any idea to fix it. If it could be fixed, I'd probably still be playing WoW :(
Sqtsquish Mar 13th 2012 4:46PM
A great deal of us wouldn't be playing a game with an artificial community that we can make friends in a safe, experimental format if we had alot on our own. So yeah, I think to a small extent we are being trolled, because some of us, aren't exactly known for our great many rl friends that they are now tailoring the game for.
Al Mar 13th 2012 5:39PM
By community, I think they mean "bring Horde players together in mutual contempt for Alliance players".
Luke Mar 13th 2012 6:22PM
AI,
Just so you know us horde fan bois still love you Alliance folk. Sure we talk smack. Sure there's rivalry, but as a member of the PvP community I have to say you're off base. Does Blizzard have a Horde bias? Maybe? But I can guarantee you that the community of long time twinks and xserver pvpers have respect for their opponents no matter what faction.
That being said:
"At times... one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents remain insipid." -Brother Nietzsche
Al Mar 13th 2012 7:59PM
Why do I get the feeling ol' Friedrich totally would have rolled Forsaken?
I've nothing against my Horde brethren, it's just that I'm weary of a game making me feel like the middle child between Horde and ... Horde. I can get my Mid Kid Experience dose from spending time with my extended family.
varzeus Mar 13th 2012 4:23PM
For our guild LFR has brought us together. Before we had to scramble for fill in 1 or 2 people who didn't show up for raid. Either we had to pug it or cancel it. I admit the challenge is LFR is not the same as 10man raid in Cata, but we're still able to enjoy it. LFR became more of a chat time, just shooting Sh**t while pew pewing.
We are looking forward to more development with LFR. And if people wan to do Raid 10man--they are more then welcome. There are no one solution to make everyone happy. Technology and tools are different from 6--or even 2 years--ago. You have to pick and choose what is best for your guild.
On the side now...
Our guild integrated Facebook with our guild content (along with our website) and that brought our community tighter as well.
epcon Mar 13th 2012 4:25PM
Who cares about a sense of community? I liked it when no one was walking around with tier 6 because, they couldn't do the content. When I was on Muru in Sunwell, 98% of the realm was in SSC/TK. It's ridiculous. I play this game to be a hardcore raider. I want to be able to show my skill that I have through my gear. Make wow like it used to be >.<
FLAMES INCOMING.
xvkarbear Mar 13th 2012 4:47PM
No.
Pyromelter Mar 13th 2012 6:47PM
Attempted sarcasm fail?
andysters Mar 13th 2012 4:24PM
For me anyways that sense of community was primarily about in your raiding guild.
What I don't like about dungeon finder is that raiding guild members get on and get their valor individually because it's more convenient. Up through Wrath I routinely banged out my dungeons when someone asked for help with one.
That's one of the things i loved about the launch Cataclysm dungeons. They were a lot easier to run with your raid buddies than with LFD.
Eternauta Mar 13th 2012 4:29PM
I'm worried that blizzard might cave in to the vocal minority and remove our beloved LFG/LFR tools. These were the innovations that kept me playing WoW as my schedule got tighter and tighter and all my RL friends eventually left the game.
They say this tools killed the sense of community. May I ask: What sense of community? How many people actually maintained long term friendships with random PuG's from trade chat? I'm sure more than a few did, but probably not the majority.
To this day I still run dungeons and PuG raids with guildies instead of random people from time to time. Why? Because I like to, not because I'm forced to.
I think community shouldn't be tied to the content you want to see, but rather to the people in-game you enjoy spending time with.
That's also why I think having different realms and different opposing factions is a way to artificially segregate the community. And I think Real ID cross-server raiding and soon BattleTags are great improvements to the game.
Blayze Mar 13th 2012 7:21PM
I share your concern. For the first time ever, Casual Steve and Puggy McJoe have an in-game tool that allows them to experience all the story content in an expansion, and they can do it at their own pace.
I just hope Blizzard don't listen to the people asking them to do ridiculous things like "return to the TBC system because then everyone has content for them."
I remember those days. I remember getting stuck in a feeder guild, all our geared members at risk of being poached by "better" guilds. I remember getting sick of Karazhan, and not being able to do a damn thing about it without being part of the problem myself.
Jordan Mar 13th 2012 11:47PM
"I'm worried that blizzard might cave in to the vocal minority and remove our beloved LFG/LFR tools. These were the innovations that kept me playing WoW as my schedule got tighter and tighter and all my RL friends eventually left the game."
People need to learn that LFG/LFR can only "hurt" those who voluntarily use it. Everyone else can simply not use it and have their "community".
I'm one of those good players who tanks and heals but only gets to see content because of the dungeon finder.
maddjoka Mar 14th 2012 12:06AM
My partners in Dungeon Finder come from other realms, but they give me a heck of a lot more interaction than I got as a lowbie in TBC. When my first character was out questing, I could go for hours without seeing another character. Even though I was a Warrior, willing to tank, and almost constantly listed in the LFG tool, I did all of four instances: Deadmines, Stocks, RFK (as DPS) and Maraudon. Maybe there was a sense of community once you found a guild and hit the level cap, but leveling 25-55 was dull and lonely. Now I'm leveling another Warrior through a mix of questing and Dungeon Finder, and I'm never hurting for company.